


Silver in the City

by Sholio



Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [22]
Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21943345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: It's the first Christmas post-season-two, Ward is overseas, and Joy is at loose ends and unsure what to do with herself. But maybe you don't have to go halfway around the world to try to be a better person.
Relationships: Joy Meachum & Colleen Wing
Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1232444
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	Silver in the City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etothey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



> This was prompted by [etothey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey) in the Defenders promptfest I ran last year; the prompt was Joy helping out at the community center. It wasn't prompted as a Christmas story, but once I started working on it, the prompt fit so well with Joy at the holidays that I decided to take it in that direction. Merry Christmas!

The Meachums never were a Christmas family, even back when things were good. When Joy was a kid, the maid used to decorate their house on Dec. 1 -- expensive decorations, tastefully coordinated, bought new every year, and mainly concentrated around the areas of the house where Dad and Uncle Wendell entertained select business guests. There was a tree, covered in glittering glass ornaments (gold one year, silver another, blue the next) that Joy wasn't allowed to touch because they were fragile, and there was one present for Joy, opened on Christmas Eve. Ward and Dad didn't open presents, because as her father explained, you stopped wanting them once you grew up.

(It was only much later that she wondered whose idea that had been, really.)

And then Dad died, and even that stopped. The first year after Dad was gone, when Joy was thirteen, Ward had asked her if she wanted to do Christmas, and she'd said no, and that was that.

They still had a family tradition of sorts, developed over the next few years. Every Christmas Eve, they went out to dinner at an Italian place they both liked. Ward always had the veal parmesan, she got the lasagna, and they had gelato for dessert.

Other than that, they worked through Christmas like any other day. It _was_ any other day. They weren't sentimental people. Joy used to feel proud of that.

And then ... Danny happened.

* * *

Last Christmas she'd spent in Paris, burning through what was left of her share of Dad's money and meticulously plotting revenge. She had gone to a Christmas market or two, but it was little more than a distraction from the main event, which was thinking of ways to make Danny and Ward pay for what they'd done.

Now, she was back in New York, with its dreary gray slush and bitter wind, and she didn't even have that. When your entire life falls apart around you, and all you have to prop yourself up is anger, and then you lose the anger too ... all she was left with was a feeling in her chest that matched the gray, cold streets outside, like a wind blowing through her, rearranging everything and leaving snow lodged in the crevices.

She had never really noticed how the city glammed itself up for the holiday season. Most years, the last half of December had been notable mainly for the flurry of charity events to which Rand sent contributions or participated as a corporate sponsor. An ever-changing array of low-level office peons had been responsible for making sure the Rand building had the right level of generic holiday cheer, as well as sending cards to their more important corporate partners and putting together the office Christmas party, where she and Ward always put in an appearance to draw the winner from the company raffle and then retreated to enjoy the relatively quiet upper floors.

That was the _real_ holiday tradition, she thought. Not the decorations, not the lights on Madison Avenue or the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, not even the Christmas Eve dinner and gelato. What she really missed were those hours after the company party when they used to go upstairs to Ward's office and work into the evening, sitting on the floor with their shoes off, drinking brandy and going over the annual reports.

Their family had never been like other families. They weren't like other people, and she'd welcomed it. But there were times like that, when it was just her and Ward, that she sometimes felt ... well, the feelings that people seemed to be feeling in Hallmark movies. It was quiet and nice, with the just the rustling of papers and Ward's occasional comments, and image didn't matter and there was nothing to chase and it was just nice to be there with her brother. He smiled more, and he sometimes laughed, when it was just the two of them.

Now she looked back on it and wondered if the sense of warm camaraderie, the calm contentment she'd felt in those quiet moments, had been only on her side all along.

It occurred to her that next year, things would change again, because now there was a niece or nephew. Ward was going to have a kid, or had had a kid already; she wasn't sure how that timeline worked out precisely. Assuming its mom didn't shut him out of its life completely, not that Joy would blame her --

... no. That really wasn't fair. She was trying not to be like that anymore.

So there would be a little Meachum, another twig on the family tree. Would that child get presents? A tree? The kid's mom might not even do Christmas, Joy realized; she knew that little about the woman her brother had knocked up. Baby Meachum might get Chanukah instead, or Eid.

But it made her wonder what her own responsibilities towards that child would be. Auntie Joy. What an alarming thought. Would she be expected to send a card? Money?

That would be the Dad thing, she thought. If he'd lived to see grandkids, he would have been exactly that kind of grandparent, the sort who sent a card and money at every birthday, probably put together by his PA with Dad's signature scrawled across the bottom.

... or would he? Maybe he would have been involved in every aspect of that child's life. It would have depended on --

On what Dad wanted out of it, she thought, and ice curled down her spine, along with the shivery feeling of uncertainty as if the ground had turned to jello under her feet.

When you were _that wrong_ about someone for that many years, it called everything else into question too.

* * *

She'd made it through most of the year by focusing on her business. She had Ward and Danny's signatures on the paperwork cutting her loose, snipping her last ties to Rand Industries. The business was hers, the patents were hers.

But there was something about the onrushing end of the year, along with the cold bleakness of a New York December, that made her wonder what her final year-end accounting would be, when it came down to it.

 _I paid them back and then some. I got real people hurt, and almost got myself killed._

The physical wounds had healed; there was nothing left now but a slight twinge now and then, making her miss an occasional step when the weather was cold and damp like this. The nightmares lingered, but they gave her a reason to get up early and stay out late.

It was the deeper questions that haunted her like a ghost over her shoulder. Questions about what she wanted to do with her life, what kind of meaning she wanted it to have. Who she was, if she wasn't Harold Meachum's good girl, Rand Industries' lawyer, Ward and Danny's nemesis.

She went to an Italian restaurant on Christmas Eve. Not the same one; she didn't think she'd ever go there again. She had lasagna. It wasn't the same, and they didn't have the lemon gelato with shaved chocolate that she'd loved at the other place. She had coconut instead.

All evening long, she thought about texting Ward. He hadn't texted _her._ The time difference meant that it would already be Christmas for him ... assuming he and Danny were still in East Asia. They could be anywhere by now. Back in New York, even. Not like she'd know.

There was Christmas music playing on the radio of the Uber that took her home. She asked the driver to turn it off.

* * *

She checked her texts first thing in the morning. Nothing from Ward or Danny. There _was_ a text from her PA, who Joy had sent off for a week of holiday leave, wishing her a polite Merry Christmas. _Thank you. I hope you're enjoying your holiday,_ Joy texted back.

She went through her morning routine and was clipping on a pair of earrings when she realized she'd dressed for the office without really thinking about it. Well, she _could_ go to the office. There was no reason not to.

Instead she changed into flat shoes and went for a walk.

* * *

She found it interesting, in a theoretical kind of way, how quickly the city went from the shining anticipation of Christmas Eve to the slightly tawdry, tired morning after. The decorations lingered, but already they had a washed-out look. Nobody was paying attention to them anymore.

A holiday wore out its welcome quickly. That was an observation she'd made early, and one of the reasons why she didn't particularly care that her family had never done much for Christmas. It was a blaze of anticipation for not much payoff. Give her numbers instead; give her something solid, something real, not a candy-floss carriage that turned back into a pumpkin when the sun came up.

Still ... it made her wonder what people _did_ do on Christmas, when the glitz had worn off and there was nothing left but the aftermath. She picked up a newspaper from a corner newsstand -- New York must be one of the few places in the country that still had those -- and tipped him a twenty, then swept off the damp seat of a bench along the Fifth Avenue park promenade and looked through the event calendar.

Lots of charity events, from the look of things. Come to think of it, she'd worked a few of these, generally the sort that involved putting on a nice dress and collecting donations. There were concerts, theatre shows, caroling. Assorted free events for the city's kids, for its poor. And one of these snagged her eye, a familiar place, a familiar name.

She hadn't expected that seeing the name of Colleen Wing's community center would make her hands shake, the paper crumpling in her grip. She laid the paper down in her lap and looked up over it, at the slushy sidewalk and the flow of traffic in the street.

Ward had run halfway around the world to try to be a different person, as if he wouldn't be taking himself with him everywhere he went, as she'd learned all too well the previous year. But it occurred to her that maybe you didn't have to travel ten thousand miles to ... stretch a little. Push against the chrysalis. Try to grow.

* * *

They didn't ask any questions. They clearly didn't know who she was. An older lady took down her name and sent her to the row of hot steam tables, where another older lady -- the volunteer staff seemed to be composed of about two parts elderly Chinese women and one part teenagers -- showed her how to put on a hair net and gloves, and handed her a slotted spoon to dish up rice.

She settled into it with more ease than she was expecting. It wasn't that different from any number of other events she'd worked at: a constant stream of new faces, a smile, a quick pleasantry. The heat from the steam table wilting her hair was the difference, maybe, and the repetitive flip of the spoon, aching where it rested against the soft flesh between her forefinger and thumb. The rice was sticky; it wanted to cling together, and she had to dig. It took her a while to get the rhythm of scooping up a similar-sized ball for each person. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to dish up less for the kids, but eventually she stopped wondering about it and just went with it. Scoop, smile, say hi, answer back if they said something to her. No different from staffing a table at any corporate event -- better maybe, because everyone here seemed happy to see her. Scoop, smile --

_"Joy?"_

Shit. She knew that voice, well-earned incredulity and all.

Joy looked around. A few feet away, Colleen stood with a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, wearing gray sweats with her hair back in a practical ponytail, staring at her.

"I'm busy," Joy said shortly. It was the only thing she could think of to say. Somehow it had just never occurred to her -- stupid as it now seemed -- that she might run into Colleen here.

A little bit of mild penance was one thing, but actually talking to Colleen ... no.

"What are you doing here?" Colleen said. She sounded like she thought Joy might have ulterior motives. In all fairness Joy thought she might have asked the same question in Colleen's place.

"What does it look like?" she said. The person next to her, a teenager with an undercut and tattoos on both arms, nudged her urgently and nearly jostled the spoon out of her hand. Joy resolutely faced forward and scooped rice.

She was aware, out of the corner of her eye, of Colleen still standing there. Finally Colleen said, "Jenny, come take a turn on the rice station, would you?"

"I'm doing this!" Joy's voice came out a frustrated yelp, not her CEO voice but something more angry, more raw.

"I know you are," Colleen said, sounding a little puzzled. "I just want to talk to you for a minute."

So Joy handed the spoon off to a young woman in a Santa Claus apron and stripped off her rubber gloves, dropping them in the nearest trash bin. She didn't even know what she was feeling: a tight ball of resentment and unhappiness and defensive frustration, and the profound feeling that she probably shouldn't have come.

Colleen seemed to agree. She set a swift pace, weaving around the end of the tightly packed tables in the community center's main space, turned to an impromptu dining hall. "What are you doing?" she said over her shoulder.

"Helping," Joy said.

"I know." Colleen opened the door into the stairwell. Joy followed her in, not sure what else to do. The door banged shut and they were closed into the echoing concrete space.

It made her breath catch in her chest. She sat down abruptly on the nearest stair, and slid back against the wall when Colleen sat next to her. It wasn't _fear,_ exactly. But there was a rush of blood to her head, an intense awareness that the last time she was alone with someone who was capable of everything Colleen was capable of, it had ended in three surgeries and a leg that still gave her trouble when she overdid it. And there was a lot of space down that stairwell.

But Colleen wasn't Davos. She leaned against the railing and rested her arms on her knees, the clipboard dangling. "You know," she said, "you almost got a lot of people here killed."

There were a lot of things Joy could have said to that. It seemed a gross mischaracterization of what she'd actually done. She wasn't responsible for Davos, or anything that he'd done.

_But I'm here, though, aren't I?_

She drew herself up, as much as a person could while wearing a hair net with her back against a cinderblock wall. "Do you plan to throw me out?"

"I ... don't know." Colleen started to run a hand through her hair and seemed to realize that all she was doing was dislodging it from the ponytail. Instead she set down the clipboard, stripped out the ponytail tie and retied it. "It's just a lot, Joy," she said, and huffed out a sort of laugh. "Leaving aside what you may or may not be responsible for in a broader sense, you had my boyfriend gutted like a fish."

Joy gave her a thoughtful look. That was a cold phrase, especially delivered with Colleen's attitude of incredulous amusement. She had, she realized, had an idea of Danny's girlfriend as a sort of Suzy Homemaker type, with the kung-fu fighting as a side job. Now she thought she might have had it the wrong way around.

"I'm trying not to be that person anymore," she said.

It was delivered with the intent of handing Colleen an explanation she could understand, just like finessing a business deal, and it wasn't until the words were out of her mouth that she realized they were sincere as well.

Colleen gave her a long look and then shook her head. "What the hell. We can use the hands. I think you'd be more use sorting donations in the back, though."

Message received. Certain Rand heirs weren't especially welcome around here as public faces right now. Fair enough. "Show me where," she said, and started to tug on the hair net, then decided to leave it in place; the results of taking it off would probably be worse than leaving it on.

Colleen hopped up and took her out the same door they'd come in, but they turned off to the side this time.

Speaking of Rand heirs ... Joy felt that her time with Colleen was growing short, and Colleen was the one person who might have answers to the questions that had been bothering her with uneasy persistence for the last day or two.

"So where are Ward and Danny, anyway?" she asked. "Do you stay in touch?"

"Mongolia," Colleen said. "Last I heard." She smiled slightly. "Danny said they might be out of cell phone range for awhile, though he thought they'd be back by Christmas. He didn't call, so I'm guessing that means no."

"You don't seem particularly worried," Joy said.

"Neither do you."

The question took her aback; it had never occurred to her that she would be, or should be, or might be expected to. "I ..." she began, but had no answer to finish with.

"Here." Colleen opened the door onto a room packed with overflowing boxes and bags. "Sorry," she added, and she did actually look slightly abashed. "Usually we sort in the main room, but I guess you can see why that's not going to work out today. What you'll need to do is dump the bags and check each item for rips or stains that would make it unwearable. You'll need three bins." She shoved a stack of enormous rubbermaid totes at Joy. "One for the genuine trash, the ones that are unusable; they'll be recycled. Clothing goes in another. Non-clothing items in the third, anything from linens to toys. Oh, and ... where's that box of gloves? You'll want them, trust me."

Joy couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this out of place, this overwhelmed. It was ridiculous, she thought, staring at the mound of bags in front of her. She slowly peeled a pair of gloves out of the box Colleen handed her and put them on. She had done far more difficult things than this. It was simply dull and menial and ...

 _... beneath her,_ was the thought that flitted through the back of her mind. She grimaced, and looked at Colleen, who was looking back at her with an expression that had sharpened to a point.

She could walk out, but if she did, she'd never walk back in again.

"What do I do with the bins?" Joy asked, and reached for a bag.

"Just fill them. There's masking tape and markers around here, so mark the bins with that."

And with that, Colleen left abruptly -- before Joy could ask what the win condition was here. She clearly wasn't going to be able to get through even a fraction of the contents of this room. Work until she got sick of it? Work until lunch? Work until someone decided she'd worked long enough and took pity on her?

She dumped a bag and got to work.

* * *

It was extraordinary, the things people threw out -- and the things people bought in the first place. Everything from designer cashmere to shockingly ugly children's clothing. What kind of parents bought their infant a onesie that looked like a pizza slice? From the sharp creases, it didn't appear that it had seen use. Perhaps there was some hope for humanity after all, she thought, pitching it into the wearable-clothing bin. (For some definition of the term.)

When it came down to it, she really _was_ good at doing repetitive work without getting bored. She actually had liked going through the Rand financials; she'd been able to keep going long after Ward had lost patience with it. ("Joy," her father had told her once, when she was maybe twelve or thirteen, "your brother doesn't have the kind of tenacity you do. He doesn't have the brains for it. And you not only have the persistence, you have the ability to take risks with it. That's a rare combination. You remind me of me, at your age.")

She'd grown up thinking her dad was wrong; Ward was her role model, the brilliant visionary whose combination of daring and ruthlessness had built Rand into the powerhouse that it was when everything fell apart. But she'd realized in the end, of course, that her father was the one with the hand on the reins all along. The credit she'd given Ward was his. Her idolized big brother was as dull as her father had always implied, all those years ago when she was too young and too naive to recognize either the truth in the criticism or her own part in the game he was playing with them, too fond of both of them to do anything except bask in the praise.

But ...

But Ward _wasn't_ stupid; he simply wasn't the forward thinker their father was. He'd never had the cold-hearted ruthlessness their dad had tried to cultivate in him; it had come out as more of a petulant selfishness instead, undercut by a base desire to be kind to the people he cared about. 

Joy prodded at frayed fabric while her thoughts floated back. Of them both, she probably _was_ more like Harold. 

She would have been proud of that, once.

She threw a stained pillowcase into the recycle bin. The next handful brought her a sequin-covered Christmas sweater. This wasn't a judgment of taste, merely usability, so she pitched it into the wearables bin. 

Reindeer antlers. Oh God, she'd found the Christmas waste. She threw that one into the non-clothing bin. A set of lurid-green Grinch pajamas went into the wearables. None of this stuff looked to have been worn in the slightest, which she could only assume spoke to the taste of its previous owners.

And yet another terrible sweater, this one huge and loose and black, with candy canes. What _was_ this, the North Pole recycling bag? She shook the sweater out, and stared at it, and pictured herself in it, and then shuddered and pitched it into the wearables bin. (Regrettably.)

"Good God," Colleen said from the doorway. "Are you still here?"

Joy looked up, mildly offended. And then she began to unkink her legs and became aware of the aches in her thighs and hips and ... everywhere. She'd been sitting here for a long time. She was very much in need of food. And caffeine. And perhaps a bathroom.

These were not comfortable clothes in which to sit on the floor for hours.

"You thought I'd left?"

"Yes," Colleen said unrepentantly. "On the off chance you hadn't, I wanted to see if you'd like to come grab something to eat."

"You're inviting me to lunch?" Joy said, incredulously.

"No, I'm inviting you to the staff break room where we're processing the leftovers. There's a ton of food, including an entire tray of warm _baozi_ that someone just brought in too late to hand out. We're all taking some. And there's coffee. Pretty decent, actually," she added, and smiled. Just a little. But not sarcastic this time.

"Okay," Joy said after a moment, and struggled to get up. Colleen reached out a hand. Joy hesitated for only a moment before taking it.

For a short person, Colleen had very strong hands, she couldn't help noticing.

"There are also cupcakes," Colleen said. "With holiday frosting."

* * *

Back at her condo that evening -- soaking the aches out of her muscles in a bubble bath with a glass of white wine and a cupcake on the edge of the tub -- she sent a text to Ward. In Mongolia (or wherever he was), it would be the 26th already, but it wasn't like his expectations were probably high or anything.

_Hi. Merry Christmas. Say hi to Danny for me._

She didn't expect a text back. But you had to start somewhere.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a planned companion story to this (Danny and Ward in Mongolia), but that one stalled out and didn't get done, though I intend to finish it at some point! There's also a follow-up to this for New Year's with all four of them, which will be posted on the 31st.


End file.
